Call to Action! – July 9 – Day of Solidarity with the Peoples Climate Strikes in Peru & Mexico against Southern Copper Corporation

July 9 – Day of Solidarity with the Peoples Climate Strikes in Peru & Mexico against Southern Copper Corporation

In Peru, Miners are joining with indigenous, environmentalists and community activists for a national strike on July 9th against Southern Copper Corporation’s plans to develop the Tia Maria copper mine, a mega-project pit mine planned for the Arequipa region of Southern Peru. Attacks by Peruvian armed forces, in league with Southern, have already resulted in the deaths of 3 protesters, with hundreds wounded and detained.

In the state of Sonora, Mexico, Southern Copper is using scab labor to bust a labor strike at the Cananea copper mine. Meanwhile, ignoring warnings by the workers that the seals on company wells were defective, Southern allowed the bad seals to leak 10.5 million gallons of sulfuric acid into the headwaters of the Rio Sonora—the worst environmental disaster in Mexico’s history.

If you are a friends of the Earth and working families, please call Southern’s US office in Phoenix with phone calls in support of the popular movement demands in Peru and Mexico. We hope to flood the office with calls!

I am calling in support of the people and ecosystems of Arequipa, Peru and Sonora, Mexico against Southern Copper’s attack on the miners’ unions, farming families and ecosystems of these regions. I demand that Southern:

Reinstate the striking miners in Cananea;

Take full responsibility for remediating the damage to the Rio Sonora resulting from the sulfuric acid spill from the Cananea copper mine;

Provide better safety and pay for Peruvian miners and end mass firings of union activists;

STOP DEVELOPMENT OF THE TIA MARIA COPPER MINE in Arequipa and end the brutal repression of the popular movement there.